How to do content marketing for your start-up

Honey Singh, Co-Founder & CEO PR and Content Marketing, #ARM Worldwide, writes how with a well-drafted PR and content marketing strategy, a start-up with a single-digit team can compete with the top guns in the industry. He also suggests 10 ways to do content marketing for your start-up

Every month, more than 500,000 new businesses are launched. With the rise of content marketing and digital PR, the marketing arena is even for everyone–be it a billion-dollar company or a bootstrapped start-up. With a well-drafted PR and content marketing strategy, a start-up with a single-digit team can compete with the top guns in the industry. It pushes you towards innovation and makes you come up with different tactics to market your start-up.

Here are 10 ways to do content marketing for your start-up:

Craft a niche and build incredible credibility

Budgets don’t craft a niche for you; it is instead your approach and way of working that creates a unique place for yourself. You can build a great culture at your workplace that breeds employee engagement and a healthy work environment. You can also offer the world a sneak peek into the work culture through the content you put on your social media handles. Creating the following content and promoting it through your social media handles will help you create credibility in your niche:

Well-written blogs offer a good understanding of your brand and business to your readers

Conduct webinars or podcasts to share your expertise with the audience

Try being a keynote speaker on different forums and conventions

Write answers related to your niche on Q&A websites like Quora

Be a storyteller

It is recommended to have a permissive approach since storytelling is not limited to primary education anymore. It is very important to gain the trust of your audience, which can be done easily by building an emotional connection through storytelling. A 360-degree approach for end users can easily solve a problem. A story narrative is important for defining a "why" attract the users' interest if they can relate with the problem.

Make your online content more visible

We are experiencing a digital revolution. Today, almost every brand and business have an online presence, but it doesn’t mean just having a website, some social media pages and a blog. It is more than that. Having content online doesn’t mean it is easily visible to your target audience.

Ensure your content comprises the right keyword, design and is published on the right platform that will result in maximum visibility as well as higher chances to reach the relevant audience.

Not sales but engagement should be your prime objective

Never try to sell to everyone you meet, it is a bad practice and abhorred by consumers. Showcasing your brand is certainly important, but primary emphasis should be given to engagement with your target audience. Moreover, social media has made conversation with consumers easy, you can engage with your customers without trying to market your products.

Even if you are a newcomer in this industry and have a modest budget to cater to your marketing needs. Content marketing and PR have completely changed the game of marketing; you just need to play smart employing the necessary tactics to stay ahead of your peers.

Have an SEO-optimised website

Your website is home of your business in the online space and it reflects your image. Make sure it is good enough to attract relevant traffic. Following some good SEO practices can surely help you stand out in the online space:

You should have unique titles to all your website pages so that they stand apart in your niche.

Make sure you remove unnecessary plugins, and extra strings of code so that the loading speed of your website remains optimised.

Make sure you post original content on your website, strictly avoid copying content and post it as Google may penalise you for it.

6.Be descriptive: Write elaborate and detailed content

One should never opt for shortcuts. It is good to share all the necessary details to your audiences that they are looking for. Put in more detailed information.Write long, precise pieces of content wherein the reader gets a complete answer to the query. The audience shouldn’t leave your post with incomplete information. Have a 360-degree approach and make sure your content is an elaborative piece with all the points covered.

Mobile optimisation: Optimise your content for mobile

The invasion of smartphones has been a significant reason for a shift in content marketing strategies. With Google giving more preference to mobile-optimised sites, it has become a necessity to consider the need of mobile users. While crafting the content strategy, you must include mobile-optimised content to leverage maximum visibility.

Guest blogging: Reach out to fellow bloggers

Although guest blogging is an age-old strategy in today’s era of digital marketing, it genuinely works big time when done with right intent. Guest blogging thrives on networking and mutual benefits. It is important to connect with fellow bloggers in your industry, publish your blogs on their sites and allow them to do the same on yours. By initiating guest blogging, your audience gets to see their content, and their audience gets to look at your content further giving credibility.

Know your customers: Create your buyer's persona

Knowing your customers, market and customer behaviour plays a very significant role in succeeding your business. One should consider various factors into consideration like age, gender, social status, occupation, marital status and hobbies and create some buyer personas. The research will vary from customer to customer; it can be generic to specific. Based on the research, one can sketch out an ideal persona and plan out a content creation strategy for the target audience.

Reuse your content: Republish, recreate and amplify

One should make a habit of reposting some fantastic written pieces posted in the past that would have left an enormous impact at that point in time. Since digital space is witnessing a great boom, there would be many who would be unaware of your old informative posts. For those set of new users, republish your old content.

Bonus Tip: You can use Quora to build thought leadership in any category relevant to business, the audience on the platform is very potent and the probability of them taking any action is high. We have seen various examples where traffic from Quora is performing three times better than any other organic sources.

Few tips to ace in content marketing using Quora:

1) Set up your profile and use right bio.

2) Target your category of interest and search for top questions and then try to give ethically correct, unbiased and insightful answers.

3) Try exploring video answers, this will help you in getting a wider reach

4) Cross share your answers on Facebook and other channels with consistency to build a network of followers.

5) You can get a free backlink from Quora, don’t overuse them.

Apart from above tips, recreate your content for different social media platforms, you can make a script out of a blog post for your YouTube video, you can take pictures of a blog post breaking them down into quotes for Instagram, and you can reframe it on a professional network like LinkedIn. A single blog post can be recreated into content suitable for different social media platforms, and that amplifies your reach exponentially.

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of www.buzzincontent.com and we do not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)

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